Keeping a White Board–White
Last week I “showed off” my less than gorgeous Freezer Board, which is a snazzy name for a dry erase board with a list of freezer items.
I also use white boards often in speech therapy. Some of my students need lists of exactly what we will do (with a desired activity at the end as incentive). With other students I work on grammar and change single words within a sentence.
As many know, it can be extremely difficult to remove “old” ink from white boards. Since my freezer board list items can stay there for months, the ink becomes almost permanent. I’ve tried rubbing with tissues, my fingers, paper towels, my pinkie toe. Nothing gets that ink off. I have no intention of buying expensive chemicals to remove ink from my $1 white board (as Office Depot would like me to do).
I recently discovered that the best way to remove old ink from white boards–is with a dry erase pen! Really. Use the pen to blacken out the words to be removed. Really blacken them. Like a love note you don’t want your high school teacher to read. Then wipe away. Presto. Gone. Nice clean board is ready for its next job!
In addition, Magic Erasers make white boards look like new again. They really are like magic in getting off that old pen ink!
Another day, another answer. I have a huge whiteboard at home – so far we’ve not used a permanent marker on it… it’s a matter of time.
I’ve tagged you for a book meme. I’m hoping it’ll tie in to your blog schedule somewhere.
We recently discovered that diluted Simple Green is fabulous for cleaning the whiteboard. We had a bottle of whiteboard cleaner but the SG is WAY better. I also use it for cleaning rubber stamps.
You can also use rubbing alcohol.
Hi CC!
Thanks for finding me! I’ve been enjoying your blog this morning. Great ideas!
Charlene
I do not have a white board in my home, but loved using them with my classes when I taught. you can also use rubbing alcohol to clean them off… if you accidentally use a permanent marker then try hair spray on it
Great idea… we have a white board for chores and it is often dirty!
Laurie, we have Simple Green here too. And rubbing alcohol. Great ideas! I’m afraid though that since I am sometimes only trying to erase one line from a list, that the liquid will erase my other lines. I’ll give those a try when I want to erase the whole board.
What a great tip. Thanks!!
Great Tip! I love that you use a dry erase board to track your freezer inventory. How come i never thought of that?!? Thanks!
Thanks for the tip
Great tip. As a teacher with a dry erase board it took several bottles of expensive cleaner to figure that one out . . .
Huh. Well. You’re so dang clever!! I’ve often noticed that dry erase marker can to wipe off what’s been recently written, but I never thought to use the techniqe to remove old, semi-permanent marks. Duh.
I used to use these when I was doing speech therapy sessions, too! I used fingernail polish remover to swipe them when this happened.
I’ve discovered that different colors have different properties, at least with the brand my college supplies for us to use in class. Green, apparently, is harder for students to see because it amplifies glares more, so I use it sparingly. Red and green both are much harder to erase than blue and black, so I try to avoid red also.
But it was amazing being assigned a room with an actual chalkboard. I didn’t know they had any of them left, but I’ve never taught in that wing before, and I guess a lot of those rooms haven’t been renovated yet. It’s amazing how much harder it is to erase chalk than it is to erase blue or black markers from a whiteboard. Of course it’s easier to wash those clean at the end of the day, but that doesn’t help in the middle of class.